Appellate court overturns baby-death conviction

A state appeals court has reversed the potentially
precedent-setting murder conviction of a Mead Valley woman whose
infant son died in 2002 after ingesting methamphetamine, possibly
through his mother's drug-tainted breast milk.

However, in their opinion released Wednesday, the appellate
court justices left open the possibility for prosecutors to retry
Amy Leanne Prien, 33, by using a different legal theory.

"The court's resolution is entirely appropriate," Prien's
appellate attorney, Tracy Dressner, said Wednesday afternoon. "The
DA's office was over-reaching to make this into a murder case."

Riverside County District Attorney Grover Trask, after
expressing his disappointment with the reversal, said it's too
early to say whether his office will retry Prien.

Trask said there are three options available to prosecutors.
They can retry Prien, or do nothing and let the reversal stand, or
they can appeal the reversal to the California Supreme Court by
filing a motion with the state's top court within 60 days.

Trask said he will soon meet with a panel of senior prosecutors
to determine which route to take.

In 2003, a Riverside County jury convicted Prien of
second-degree murder and Judge W. Charles Morgan sentenced her to
15 years to life in state prison. Her 3-month-old son, Jacob, had
meth in his system when he died, according to a coroner's
toxicological report.

Prien's conviction on a felony child endangerment charge with an
enhancement that it caused Jacob's death remains in place. If the
murder conviction is not reinstated, Prien still faces a maximum
prison term of up to 10 years.

The 4th District Court of Appeal opinion, filed Wednesday,
reversed the second-degree murder conviction only as far as the
theory argued by the prosecutor that felony child endangerment is
an inherently dangerous act. The justices wrote that Morgan erred
by instructing jurors to consider that theory.

However, the justices left open the possibility for Prien, who
is currently in prison, to be retried on second-degree murder with
another prosecution theory, this one involving implied malice.

That legal theory argues that a death results from an
intentional act, the natural consequences of which are dangerous to
human life and that it was deliberately performed with knowledge of
the danger and a disregard to human life.

The appellate justices also reversed the jury's conviction of
felony child endangerment involving Prien's other three children,
ages 13, 5, and 3 at the time. They ruled that prosecutors can not
re-file those counts against Prien.